Mark L. Stout Consulting is an all-purpose transportation consulting firm, specializing in finance, program management, and legislative and DOT policy. Our company has served public agencies and non-profits, big and small, all across the nation. Mark is widely-recognized as an expert whose years of experience can help organizations to break through gridlock and deliver transformative projects and innovative community enhancements.

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Tuesday, December 2, 2014

On Wisconsin…..to a better alternative to freeway widening!

Congrats to Bruce Speight, WISPIRG, and the Coalition for
More Responsible Transportation for going nose to nose with Wisconsin DOT over
the agency’s proposed widening of I-94 in Milwaukee.It’s a bad project, out of touch with the times and the
place, and deserves to be replaced by something better.

My role has been to offer a real alternative for the
something better: “The Rehab/Transit Option: A Better Solution for Milwaukee’s
East-West Corridor.”The Coalition
formally launched the option at a City Hall press conference today (links to
the press release, the full report, and a map of the transit plan all available
on WISPIRG’s website here).
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story, with video, slide show, and link to paper here.

The two pieces of the proposal are pretty straightforward.The Rehab part would replace WisDOT’s
unnecessary widening with a rehabilitation project.The Draft Environmental Impact Statement actually concedes
that most of the infrastructure, safety, and operational issues on the highway
can be addressed through a rehab option.The Transit piece proposes a new, high-quality, rapid transit system in
the corridor that would provide long-term, sustainable mobility, much more in
keeping with the needs of a 21st-century city.At this stage of the game, the transit
plan is very much conceptual, with detailed planning and engineering stages
needed.But hopefully the concept
plan will show Milwaukee and southeast Wisconsin citizens how major origins and
destinations can be better linked by a modern transit system than by an 8-lane
(in some places 10-lane) urban freeway!